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Meanwhile in Brazil (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 days ago by [M] to c/politicalmemes@lemmy.ca
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[–] 12 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The problem is they don't have to be the majority. They really don't. They just have to make the majority apathetic. And they have lots of allies on that left and right. So we always have to stay vigilant. There's already been a little bit of that going on here in the US with the midterms and it's only going to increase over the next two years. Hopefully we can make it past like Brazil did.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    One thing that really helped Brazil in this election was compulsory voting. It’s a lot harder to disenfranchise people when voting is mandatory as you can’t just make them apathetic towards voting at all; you need to make them apathetic towards voting for a specific person/party.

    I’ve said it a million times before and I’ll continue to crow about it until it’s the norm in all democracies: compulsory voting saves lives. With compulsory voting in the USA the Republicans would basically cease to exist outside of rural areas, because you just can’t win with only 30% of voters backing you.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 days ago

    At one point I likely would have agreed. I understand where you're coming from though.

    Electoralism has issues. Compounded horribly by offices with too much power to abuse, and little to no accountability. One of the issues with electoralism is that it requires informed educated voters. An impossible task. Some people just refuse, some people legitimately don't have time. Mandating them to vote will likely backfire more often than not I'd think.

    With Lula specifically the runoff really saved things. The fact that it was even close. The fact that any of these chodes anywhere get as close as they do is both damming and terrifying. I'm so thankful they got a second chance in Brazil. But we really need to get ourselves collectively out of having all our eggs in an all or nothing basket. Have a real discussion about electoralism, the need for some of these offices, and the power they have.

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